Connie Riggio Photography

Does anyone else remember getting a pair of animals with each Arco gas fill up? I used to love getting these and I’m sure I owned several arks and coordinating animals.

I actually didn’t give a huge amount of thought to this week’s theme: nostalgia.  I think I was so exhausted from thinking of the last one, that I just couldn’t bring myself to go too deep on this one… I didn’t know what I was going to do until Saturday, when I was putting some stuff away in a closet and came across a box from my childhood.  Anyone who knows me well, knows that I am a collector.  I have many collections – Fenton glass shoes and boots, floaty pens, Wilton trivets, glass Christmas ornaments, glass baskets, Rainbow art glass fruit, old cameras, Fiesta Ware, and the list goes on….  I started collecting as a child… but back then I collected some strange stuff, the victim of being a kid without money I guess … I collected junk mail, medicine bottles and the toys I got from products like cereal, cracker jacks and Arco gas.  Well, as I got older the junk mail got thrown out along with the pill bottles, but I managed to keep the box of cereal toys.  Why I keep this stuff I don’t know.  It’s just how I am.  I have many things around my house that could fit this photo challenge.  I am sentimental and most of the things in my house have a story behind them.  I can tell you when and where we bought it or who owned it before me.  I have thought many times that I need to write this all down for my kids… they will never know that I have the first ring my Nana was ever given by a boy along with a picture of the two of them sitting on a rock together.  They need to know that kind of stuff don’t you think? My collections are neatly displayed around our house, but the box of toys was just tucked away and forgotten until I found them on Saturday… it really isn’t the kind of collection to display, but I will share it with you.

Over the years I have managed to lose the top of the ark and the ramp… must be up in the attic somewhere and some of the animals have their legs chewed off (hmmm….) but when I set them all up I remembered how much I played with them. I had purple shag carpet in my room, so these had to be set up in the kitchen where the floor was smooth.  I can picture my mom at the gas station while the attendant cleaned our windshield and filled the tank (the good ol’ days).  I remember them handing the bag of animals to me and the excitement I felt to get a set I didn’t have already.

I know I collected them long enough to see some variations in the way they made Noah and his wife and even some of the animal poses.

Along with the Arco animals I also had the dolls of the world – wonder where they are now and the glass animals from Red Rose Tea and cereal toys….
When opening a new box of cereal I would quickly puff the box up and look down the side to see if I could find the toy.

I must have spent an hour going through them all as I set them up on the living room floor. Then, as I was preparing this post, we spent another hour looking up vintage cereal toys on the internet… fun stuff I tell ya! These are from the R&L company called Daffy Dawgs – Corny Canines. They took a while to find, but we finally did! They came in Kellogg’s Corn Flakes in the 70’s (wow, that dates me). We found them on eBay for about $10 a piece… you might be seeing my collection on there soon .

Some are still in packages… and some are just little scraps of paper that normal people would not keep… My name is Connie Riggio and I have a problem…

Remember Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs cereal? I must have liked it, I have a ton of these magnets. This was made by Ralston – isn’t that a pet food company?

My mom’s favorite cereal was called Sugar Pops, but for “some” reason it no longer has the word Sugar as part of the title… it’s now just called Pops. Can’t advertise that it is made with sugar. Times have changed!

Do you remember the scrubbing bubbles? I wonder where I picked those up?

Look, it’s an Olympic figure skater card from 1980 and do you see Frankenberry? Loved that cereal… along with Boo Berry, but I never liked Count Chocula.

Hope you enjoyed my walk down memory lane… I know I had fun preparing it for you.

Visit Sara’s blog for another example of Nostalgia!

Next Challenge: Reflections – Reflected image: the image of somebody or something that appears in a mirror or other reflecting surface or Considered idea: an idea or thought, especially one produced by careful consideration.